SEOquake – A Must-Have SEO Tool

Ever wished you could run the SEO analyses that deliver the data you’re interested in without having to use a standalone program?

Wanted to run SEO analyses without having to use the extremely expensive licensed software?

Curious about whether it’s possible to do SEO on the go?

For most people, SEOquake is the last SEO tool you’ll ever need.

SEOquake combines a fully featured SEO analysis suite into a single package which you can run quickly and easily via a browser plugin, or even on your iOS device.

If you are serious about your digital marketing success, dabbling in the information that SEOquake provides will rank up your game.

In this article, we’ll take on SEOquake and show you the ropes, starting from the very bottom.

You’ll learn how to install SEOquake, how to use its overviews, and how to dive into the deep reports that the app can generate.

The best part about SEOquake is that it’s intuitive to use and can explain anything which might be confusing for you, so don’t be afraid that you’re not experienced enough in SEO to get started.

How to Install SEOquake

Speaking of getting started, you’ll need to install the SEOquake plugin or app.

The install process for SEOquake varies slightly between each of the platforms you can use it on, but the gist of it is navigating to the app or plugin “store” for your browser and adding it.

The browser should do the rest.

On Google Chrome

If you’re using Google Chrome as your web browser, navigate to the plugins center.

Once there, search for SEOquake, which should take you to a screen identical to the above.

Click the “available on Chrome” button in the upper right, and SEOquake will automatically install itself. You’ll need to restart your browser before using SEOquake.

On Firefox

In Firefox, SEOquake is considered a “browser extension,” but the installation process is the same.

Navigate to the “plugins” section of the Mozilla Firefox website, search for SEOquake, and press the green “Add to Firefox” button. Like in Chrome, you’ll have to restart your browser before using SEOquake.

On iOS (iPad & iPhone)

If you’re an iOS user, you already know where this is going. Navigate to the app store or iTunes, search for SEOquake Go, and click install. Unlike in Chrome and Firefox, you won’t need to restart anything. If you’re running SEOquake on an iPhone instead of an iPad, you may want to close other apps that are running because SEOquake can take up a lot of resources.

SEOquake Features and How to Use Them

Now that you’ve installed SEOquake, it’s time to get started with analyzing sites and links. If you have a particular site in mind load it up now. Otherwise, just follow along with the example here. The example here is of Google.com’s search engine results for the search terms “shrimp fishing on horseback.”

You don’t have to use SEOquake on a page of search terms, but doing so can give you a lot of interesting information about your competition, so you should try it at least a few times with keywords that are relevant to your site.

Once you’ve navigated to your site of choice, it’s time to run SEOquake.

Getting Around SEOquake

SEOquake is only running when you click on the badge. To prompt SEOquake to run an analysis on the page that you’re currently looking at, you’ll need to activate it on your browser’s toolbar. To enable SEOquake on your browser’s toolbar, you’ll need to click on the green badge icon.

Finding the Badge

SEOquake’s badge icon lives next to your search bar on Firefox and Chrome. You can recognize it by its “SQ” text, like in the example below.

If you don’t see the badge popping up in your browser’s toolbar after you’ve installed SEOquake, there’s a good chance that something went wrong with the installation. It’s also possible that the badge is hidden because of your browser’s toolbar settings. Be sure to fix the problem before continuing or else you won’t be able to use SEOquake.

Click the Badge

Once you’ve located the badge, left click on it to expand it. You’ll see in the above example that SEOquake pops up as an overlay on the page. Accessing SEOquake via the badge gives you a quick snapshot of what’s on the page.

All the features of SEOquake show up in the badge menu, but they won’t display their full amount of data until you expand the individual tabs into their full size, which you can do by clicking on the tab heading. If you’d rather cut to the chase and skip the overview that you find via clicking the badge, you can also right-click and select from the “SEOquake” menu that should appear at the bottom of the list.

What’s in The Badge?

At the top of the badge, you’ll see the tab headings. Each heading corresponds to one of SEOquake’s major features.

Each tab has a wealth of information which you’ll see at a glance via the badge, but your real in-depth analysis will come from viewing the full data set, which lives in each tab’s heading within the badge.

If you ever want to get to the complete analysis, just click the “view full report” button at the bottom of each tab of the badge.

We’ll go over the badge menu in detail in a moment, but first, take a look at the two numbers next to the “Internal” and “External” tabs.

These numbers are simply the number of internal or external links on the page.

If you’ve ever even thought about SEO, you know that more links pointed toward a site means a better page rank.

Not all links are created equal, but remember to take a glance at the top of the badge to get an idea of the scale of the site’s incoming and outgoing links.

Next, let’s see what other pieces of information we can pick up at a glance.

Above, you’ll see the badge as it will appear to you in full. This overview is an estimation of the total traffic heading to the site.

For a site like Google, in our example, it’s no surprise to see billions of visits. You’ll also see the site’s global traffic rank, the number of unique visitors, and other stats.

On the right, you’ll see the way that people navigated to the site. For Google.com, it’s clear that most people just click a link or type Google.com into their search bar.

For other sites, you may want to optimize your content for search traffic or social traffic. Be sure to take frequent snapshots of your site with the overview from the badge.

Display Advertising

One of the great features is the ability to take a glance at the advertising profile on the site that you’re analyzing.

The “Display Advertising” tab on the badge clues you into the total number of different ads and publishers that live on the site you’re analyzing and breaks them down into media ads versus text ads.

This information is precious if you’re planning to deploy advertisements for your site on another site. After all, you wouldn’t want to deploy your text ad on a site where media ads dominate and vice versa.

Next, let’s look at how SEOquake gathers its data and how it figures out the numbers that you see in the badge and elsewhere.

Changing Parameters

If you’re interested in breaking into the guts of how SEOquake estimates the traffic that a site gets, check out the “Parameters” tab.

In the Parameters tab, you’ll get a deeper look into the data that you saw reflected on the overview, and you can also modify the indices and rankings which SEOquake uses to make its estimations.

To alter, remove, or add to the Parameters, just click on the little arrow next to each parameter.

Preferences

If you click the gear in the top right of the badge, you’ll see SEOquake’s preferences and configuration page. Here, you’ll be able to enable or disable SEOquake itself as well as see patch notes, and get access to the even larger preferences menus.

If you do end up looking at the larger preferences menus, you’ll be able to define the filenames of your CSV exports, add delays to your parameter requests, and alter every other aspect of your app.

You don’t need to get involved with these preferences to make full use of SEOquake, but if you wish that you could change a certain setting and aren’t sure how it’s probably in the extended preferences menu.

Once you’ve configured your parameters and plugin to your liking, it’s time to take a deeper dive into SEOquake’s full analytics suite.

Page Info

Click on the “Page Info” tab, then navigate to the full report.

You’ve already seen most of this information on the preview, but there’s a few tidbits worth picking up here that aren’t on the badge.

The meta description of the page is especially worth a look.

You could harvest this information without SEOquake by looking at the page’s source code, but it’s faster this way.

Page SEO Audit

You can navigate around the full reports by clicking on the tab above each report. Clicking on the “Diagnosis” tab takes you to this “Page SEO Audit” report, which contains a ton of valuable information that you’ll need to understand.

On the general audit page, you’ll be able to see whether the URL length, meta description, headings, and images are properly proportioned to optimize for high ranking.

Check out the top of the page and make a note of the icons which indicate which metrics your site has passed, which need to be fixed, and which could be improved.

If you’re not sure about why your site isn’t optimal, click on the Tips tab to get some tutelage courtesy of SEOquake. As search algorithms change, so will the advisories.

Next, it’s time to see how our site stacks up to others—perhaps your competition.

Compare URLS or Domains

Part of the appeal of SEOquake is that you can easily compare the page rank and SEO friendliness of a bunch of different sites at once.

Click on the “Compare URLS/domains” tab, and paste all of the URLs you want to compare.

Click the “process URLs” button, and a detailed report will spit right back at you.

Using this page, you’ll be able to crunch the numbers and optimize your site for keyword competition or other SEO strategies.

Don’t be afraid to import dozens or hundreds of links via a CSV file, either—it might take a while to get your results back, but you can also export the results for safe keeping and charting.

You could probably use SEOquake for this feature alone, so be sure to play around with it.

Internal Links

What would an SEO analysis tool be without reports on the internal links within a site? The internal links tab offers a full report on just that.

If you’re concerned about the kind of links or the throughput of the links that you have on a given site, this tab is your friend.

External Links

Similarly, external links are of critical importance when trying to optimize your site for page rank. The external links tab is identical to the internal links tab and worth a look.

Getting Started on Your First SEOquake Analysis

Now that you’re familiar with the badge and SEOquake’s basic features, it’s time to take it out for a whirl on your own.

You can pop open the badge on whichever site you navigate to, so take advantage of SEOquake.

If you’re not sure which stats you should be the most interested in, just let the plugin’s tips guide you.

SEOquake is a great tool, and you’ll be able to make use of its powerful information in no time flat.